Internet, Mobile And Social Media Censorship In India By Twitter, Facebook, Google, Etc

This Blog Covers Techno Legal Issues Of Internet, Mobile And Social Media Censorship In India For Digital India, Aadhaar, Natgrid, Etc By Twitter, Facebook, Google, Etc. Technology Companies Of India And US Are Silently Censoring Critical Contents About Indian Govt From Time To Time. This Is Defeating The Right To Speech And Expression Of Indians And Their Right To Know.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

Anybody who has dealt with international cyber law and cyber security
related issues must be aware that it is really tough to solve such
cases. Being transnational in nature, cyber law and cyber security
issues require international cooperation among various nations and
law enforcement agencies.

For instance, if a simple exercise of internet protocol tracking is
undertaken, it takes months before any information is received from a
foreign jurisdiction. Even in such cases, these are exceptional cases
and not a general practice. In this process, the crucial digital
evidence is lost forever and the cyber crimes investigation becomes a
cold trail.

As on date we have no
dedicated cyber
security laws in India. This is the reason why cyber
security is more ignored than complied with in India. Even the
blooming e-commerce industry of India is devoid
of required cyber security practices and requirements. Cyber security
of banks
in India is also not upto the mark. This has forced the Reserve Bank
of India to constitute a IT
subsidiary that would consider, monitor and prescribe
cyber security related rules, regulations and practices for banks in
India. Even the Companies Act 2013 has prescribed cyber
security obligations for the directors of companies. This
is in addition to the cyber
law obligations of banks and directors of Indian
companies.

It is well understood
that international
legal issues of cyber attacks are not easy to handle.
Nevertheless, Indian government cannot afford to ignore this
situation and it must urgently work towards making Indian cyber
security robust, resilient and effective. P4LO hopes that our readers
would find our blog on international legal issues of cyber attacks,
cyber law and cyber security useful.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Google is engaging in unreasonable manual
action penalty and censorship
of blogs in India and abroad. There are many blogs that
have been censored by Google to further its own commercial interests
with active disregard to civil liberties and freedom of speech and
expression.

For instance, the following blogs have been demoted
and subjected to manual action penalty by Google without any reason
and justification:

For some strange reasons blogs and news pertaining
to cyber security and cyber forensics have been openly censored by
Google. The reason for the same is still unknown but Google is
definitely aware of what is happening in its house.

This episode also gives rise to a question-is Google
manipulating and abusing its dominant position and is engaging in
unfair trade practices? Perhaps the competition commission of India
and federal trade commission of US must initiate an investigation
into this practice of Google.

Sunday, September 30, 2012

It
seems the affairs of Google are well beyond its control. From news
censorship to blog censorship, Google has been doing it
all. Initially it used to be a piecemeal work but now Google has been
indulging in mass censorship and mass demotion of blogs.

Manual
action penalty by Google is in abundance these days.
However, what is surprising is the fact that Google is indulging in
illegal and wrong manual action penalty and blogs and news
censorship.

Even worst is the aspect that Google never discloses
the reason for such censorship and manual penalty. The aggrieved
person has no remedy to agitate against the wrong doings of Google.

The following websites have been demoted and
subjected to manual action penalty by Google without any reason and
justification:

This illegal
money making exercise of power companies of Delhi is
happening with active support of Delhi government that has not taken
any action against the defaulting companies despite many complaints
and protests.

Even the assurances of Delhi’s chief minister
Sheila Dikshit proved nothing more than lip service. However, if this
was not enough Google has been censoring news pointing towards such
corrupt practices happening in open in Delhi.

Google has censored the news titled “Power
Companies Defying Delhi Chief Minister’s Directions”
at the instance of some of the power companies who do not wish to be
exposed. Even the hand of Delhi government in it cannot be ruled out.
This censorship exercise is not only wrong but is clearly illegal on
the part of Google as it has not provided any intimation or/and
option to counter false claims of such power companies.

Google has been censoring news
in India for long and we believe it is high time to send a
notice to them and ask for proper explanation in this regard. This is
so because if Google is following Indian laws then it has to comply
with the same for all purposes. On the other hand, if Google is
following US laws then there is an obligation on its part to provide
an opportunity to the aggrieved party to represent his/her/its case.

The unilateral action of censorship on the part of
Google is therefore clearly illegal and needs to be checked legally.
We are working in this direction and would update our viewers very
soon.

The news article in question has nothing
controversial but it is discussing about some of the most corruption
related aspects of India. Perhaps, the article has brought out in
public the dirty linen of Indian government but the censorship act of
Google has also brought Google’s dirty linen in public as well.

It seems Indian government is not interested in
putting the truth before the public at large. First it claimed that
it has destroyed the Radia tapes and then it claimed that the
investigation is still going on so the tapes are required to be kept
in safe custody.

However, the Indian government has still not told
the Supreme Court of India who leaked the tapes. It seems public
interest is not important and all the Indian government is doing is
hiding of the dirty facts and truths of Radia tapes controversy.

As opined by Praveen Dalal, managing partner of ICT
law firm Perry4Law,
“The Indian Constitutional Scheme is based upon “Balance of
Rights” and no right is absolute in nature. In case of conflict
between two Fundamental Rights, the Fundamental Right that
strengthens and substantiate the Public Interest should prevail”.
Hence if there is a conflict between Right to Privacy and Right to
Information/know, information can be disclosed in certain
circumstances to substantiate and strengthen Public Interest, opines
Dalal.

It is high time for Indian government to disclose
who leaked the Radia tapes. Similarly, the Supreme Court of India
must also keep in mind the balance of fundamental rights as citizens
of India have a right to know about the corrupt practices happening
within the governmental functioning.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

There are various methods
through which Google
censors and manipulates SERPs, news, blogs and other
results. Google rely heavily upon the “crawling methodology” to
produce results as per its own requirements. Google may create a 503
error or other such error. However, such an error is apparent if you
analyse the webmaster tool.

It seems Google has developed another innovative
method of censorship of posts that it finds controversial. Google
seems to be manipulating the robots text file (robots. txt) to block
even those posts and segments that are not, by design, supposed to be
blocked.

The worst part is that it is done in a clandestine
manner and you cannot do much even if you thoroughly analyse the
webmaster tool. Today I spend an entire day to understand why
the post titled “cyber
forensics and Indian approach” was censored by Google.

I analysed the webmaster tool and found the message
telling me that the “health” of the blog titled Cyber
Forensics in India is not in good shape. The exact message
reads “Severe health issues are found on your site - Check site
health”. Upon further analysing the problem, the webmaster tool
told that “some important page is blocked by robots.txt”.

I first analysed the message that reads “Is
robots.txt blocking important pages?” and it returned
the message that reads “The page you are trying to reach does not
exist (404)”. I then tried to analyse the important page that has
been blocked by the robots.txt file and it gave me this
page.

Before proceeding further, let us check the standard
robots.txt file of Blogspot blogs. The standard robots.txt file in
case of the present blog (and all other Blogspot blogs as it is
similar except the blog address) is as follows:

It is clear that the only thing that has been
disallowed by the Blogspot robots.txt file is the /search directory
and its sub folders. All other directories and their sub folders are
crawlable and accessible to not only Google’s bots but also
crawling bots of other search engines as well.

Now when we clicked upon the important page that has
been blocked by robots.txt file of our Blog, it took us here.
Now this is absurd on at least two counts. Firstly, this is bound to
be blocked due to the blocking of search directory so there is
nothing unnatural as such. This cannot be termed as a “serious
health issue” for the blog.

Secondly, there is no entry or record of the post
that has been censored by Google at all. There is no error, either
crawling or indexing. There are no malware issues. There are no pages
removal issues involved as well.

Clearly, whatever happened to that post happened at
the level of Google and Google owes an explanation to us in this
regard. We are aware that we are not facing this issue alone and
there are tons of examples where these issues have arisen and
resolved at Google.

However, we saw no reason for the blocking,
filtering, censorship or deindexing of our post. It is time for
Google to explain.

Like Priyanka
Sharma said, the trust and confidence in Google
has long
eroded and so is Google motto of not being evil. I hope someone at
Google is reading these posts and would take notice of the
deteriorating standards of Google’s civil liberty protection
initiatives and efforts.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Negative search engine optimisation (SEO) has been messing up with Google’ search results for long. It is not possible to absolutely stop such malpractices and abuse of Google’s search engine results placement (SERPs) but Google has to tackle such evil practices with an iron hand. For the time being, Google seems to have been defeated by splogs and content farms that are engaging in negative SEO techniques.

These negative SEO techniques are also responsible for poor growth and bad search reflection of many genuine, hard working and original content creating websites. For instance, contents lifted from these original blogs frequently appear at splogs and Google punishes the original blog owner for the wrong doing of the splogger. In fact negative SEO and splogs are the main reasons why Google censors and manipulates SERPs, news and blog results.

Due to negative SEO Google believes that a genuine and original website is engaging in spam and link exchange behaviour but in reality this is not true. But Google still punishes the original and genuine website due to bad and malicious behaviour of others.

Now it seems Google has taken artificial and unnatural links seriously and has issued notifications to website owners to remove artificial, unnatural and paid links. But Google has still not explained how a genuine and original source website owner can get his own copyrighted contents removed from platforms over which neither Google nor the copyright owned content website has any control whatsoever.

However, the worst nightmare while dealing with Google is that Google is not willing to take down splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods even when there is clear evidence provided to it in this regard. If a single post is removed after DMCA complaint, the splog would pick posts of other blogs and it would still remain active.

When there is a clear case of continuous and persistent copyright violation by a single individual or organisation, deleting a single post is not the right approach. Google and Posterous have failed to realise this fact while TypePad is doing the right thing.

It would be better if both Google and Posterous removes the offending blogs than the posts alone as a single individual or organisation that is manipulating many platforms does not deserve to remain on the platform. However, for the time being, these splogs, content farms and bad neighbourhoods are fooling Google and Posterous.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Spam blogs (splogs), content farming websites and bad neighbourhoods are big nuisances for not only the blog and websites owners whose copyrighted contents these splogs, etc pick but they are also greatly disliked by the people looking for relevant and authentic results through search engine results placements (SERPs).

This is the reason that search engines like Google regularly take action against splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods. Till now Google’s strategy in this regard was to silently demote these splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods either through algorithms like Panda update or through manual action penalty.

Even after a valid DMCA notice to Google in this regard, Google takes 5 to 7 days to resolve copyright violation claims. This policy and method of Google needs to be changed as soon as possible. Even this policy of Google is illegal as per the Indian cyber law that does not allow such long period to Google and other Internet intermediaries to take corrective and appropriate action.

The only good thing about this entire episode is that now Google has started sending warning messages to websites/blog owners about artificial or unnatural links pointing towards their websites/blogs. We have been doing a herculean task of doing this on our own so far regarding our own websites/blogs and this notification system of Google may save many hours of labour on our part.

Google has recently sent such messages to many webmasters informing them of the Google’s Webmaster Guidelines violations. The idea is to check manipulation of Google’s PageRank. For example, buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link exchange schemes violates Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

However, Google is still unable to punish splogs, contents farms and bad neighbourhoods that deliberately use negative SEO to harm genuine websites/blogs. Even if proper DMCA complaints and link removal requests are made to Google, it refuses to tale proper action against the offenders and recommends contacting the owner of website directly.